On Sunday at about 1:30 p.m., chef Ken Smith walked into the Upperline for work and handed a letter to JoAnn Clevenger, the restaurant’s owner. After reading it, Clevenger said, “We both had a good cry.”

Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-PicayuneKen Smith and JoAnn Clevenger at the Upperline in 2005.Smith has been working at the Upperline for 19 years, beginning as an intern when he was studying at Delgado Community College. For the last ten years he has been the restaurant’s executive chef. The letter detailed Smith’s intention to leave the culinary profession to enter the seminary.

Clevenger said his last day will be July 31.

“It’s a whole new adventure. He’s renewing his life,” Clevenger said of Smith. “We’re excited for him, but we’re sad he’s no longer going to be with us. After 19 years, you get used to saying, ‘Hi Ken. How you doing?”

Smith’s tenure spans much of the 27 year-old restaurant’s history, during which it has employed only four chefs. He apprenticed under the late Tom Cowan and worked as a sous chef under Richard Benz, who left to open Dick & Jenny’s, opening a door for Smith to take over the kitchen.

Smith is a rare breed in New Orleans restaurants, an African-American from rural Louisiana – Natchitoches, in his case – whose cooking unearthed connections between the Creole cooking he grew up with and that of New Orleans.

Clevenger said she hopes to hire a replacement within three weeks to give the new hire time to learn under Smith. I’ll flesh out to this story once I get a chance to talk with Smith himself.

Brett Anderson can be reached at banderson@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3353. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BrettAndersonTP.